Wow, just when I thought Obama and the Democrats pussied out, the House passed health care reform with a public option. The bill will cost 894 Billion over the next 10 years or about 89 Billion per year which is about 32 Billion dollars less per year than we spend per year on the Iraq war. The good thing about this is that this money will go to help Americans....36 million uninsured Americans to be exact and make health care more affordable and will force insurance companies to play by the rules.
So if any fiscal conservatives want to bitch about throwing too much money away, Iraq is by far the biggest reasons the tax rates of the top 1% of the population will return to what they were in the 90s and still be about half of what they were during Reagan's first term.
6 comments:
First of all, it's a 2,000-page (ok, 1,990, but that's only because they wanted the number to read better) monstrosity, of which the government option is (scarily) only now a relatively small part. I can't imagine how something this convoluted will "fix" health care, much less "create competition" with the government option (as advertised) or make it possible for the insurance companies to "play by the rules," because they'll have to hire staff just to handle the tangle of red tape being added (or is this stimulus?).
Disagreement on the solution aside, streamlining any process should result in less cost. How is the beast that is this bill going to do that?
As for the cost of the mess compared to Iraq, the ticker to the right said $695,813,170,930 when I captured it. That's still less than the budgeted amount of the current $894,000,000,000, 2,000-page monstrosity. And that doesn't include the real cost of the bill (which if history is any measure, will double at the least). And ideally, Iraq will be ending soon.
That's not to say which is a better use of the money, only to the point of correcting your numbers.
First off, the 894 billion is over 10 years, the 700 billion in Iraq has been over 6 years so the annual cost of being in Iraq is more than the annual cost of the new health care bill. That doesn't include how much they will reduce medical costs with this bill and therefore reduce the deficit.
And no, it will not fix health care and it still leaves the Insurance companies running the show for the most part. It reigns them in a little but I really think this is just a small step that we can get away with now. We are one of the last Western Industrialized nations to not provide health care to its citizens so it is only a matter of time.
Wait, how are the insurance companies running anything, with the preponderance of regulation, mandates, and the noose of the government option dragging them behind the monster truck that is this bill until they are nothing?
They are paying off congress to stop these reforms, they are involved with writing the bills and they decide what treatment you get...not you, not your doctor.
The public option won. The public interest lost.
It's only common sense to stop these ill-conceived "reforms". The insurance companies aren't running anything. The claim that they are is a myth made to try to divert people's attention from the list of greedy special interests in favor of the Dems bill. These include the SEIU (which stands to gain money with government-run health care as new government workers are forced to join unions against their will) and the abortion industry (which was foiled at the last minute, but is trying to get a healthcare bill that funnels billions of taxpayer dollars into the abortion industry).
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"First off, the 894 billion is over 10 years....That doesn't include how much they will reduce medical costs with this bill and therefore reduce the deficit."
1) How can you say it will cost $894 billion? Can you think of a government program that did not run twice, triple, or even many times more what "they" said it would cost? The closest example is Medicaid and Medicare. These have cost 9 times as much as the backers originally claimed. So, how does it look now, with a progrma likely to cost several trillion?
2) Currently most medical costs are in the private sector. Therefore, they are not part of the deficit problem. This creates a new government program with new waste spending. It can only greatly increase the deficit.
Really, Insurance companies arent running things?? So you are saying that when it comes to your health care that your insurance company doesn't have the final say as to whether or not you receive treatment...Well, I mean, they don't have the final say when it comes to them covering your treatment which is kind of what you have been paying them for all these years??? Ya right! You keep telling yourself that and when the sky turns green in your world let me know.
1. Oh you mean like Iraq?? Which by the way, will end up costing more and costs more per year than this health care bill but I didn't hear you complaining about the cost of that.
2.WHen Medicare and Medicade are already the largest insurers in the country and they pay the doctors in the private sector, yes, that adds to our deficit.
What exact waste are you talking about??
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